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Pastor's Blog February 14, 2019

"Praise to God in His Holiness and Majesty"

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Psalm 29 is a worship song that is packed with creation language.  Twice reference is made to "the waters," the first time teasingly evoking the creation of the world (Psalm 29:3; cf. Genesis 1:2) and the second time explicitly mentioning the flood (Psalm 29:10). 

God's voice is depicted as producing various effects on creation: it can bring about mighty acts of destruction or it can gently bring into the world new-and-delicate life (Psalm 29:5-9).  And throughout this psalm, the worship of God in the "temple" (heavenly or earthly?) is linked with God's rulership over the created order (the relationship between Psalm 29:1-2 and Psalm 29:3-4; likewise, the relationship between Psalm 29:9 and Psalm 29:10).  And it is in this context that we encounter the words of Psalm 29:2, " Give unto the Lord the glory due to His name; worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness" (NKJV). 

The entirety of Psalm 29 answers the question of why we should give God the glory due to his name.  The answer is because of who God is: he is the mighty and powerful Creator, the one who made everything in the beginning and continues to create new life and sustain it.  Consequently, God is worthy of receiving glory, not because he is the strongest and so can throw the biggest temper-tantrum, but because it is right and good to give glory to he who is Ultimately Glorious. 

But what does it mean to worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness?  The NKJV's marginal note - that the Hebrew actually is "the majesty of holiness" - is just as striking as the phrase "the beauty of holiness," but it gets us nowhere closer to the answer to our question.  The answer to our "how" question, I believe, is found in the second half of verse 4: "the voice of the Lord is full of majesty."  If the Lord's voice is full of majesty, and if the Lord's voice results in his manifold care of creation, then I think the way Psalm 29:2 is calling us to worship God is by paying attention to the fact that God is our Creator and Sustainer.  According to Psalm 29, God shows us who he is by his care for his creation.  And it is when God shows us who he is that we find him truly beautiful and majestic, which also means he is truly holy. 

Today we are invited by Psalm 29:2 to worship the Lord in the beauty and majesty of his holiness - to recognize that God beautifully and majestically creates and shapes and forms all of us, and has been doing so from our beginning.  Let us, therefore, praise and worship the Lord for showing his holiness to us in this way.